The Press Box - Listener Mail on the Rules of Journalism, Elizabeth Holmes’s Trial, and an In-Season ‘Hard Knocks’

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

Bryan and David answer your Listener Mail and discuss how the rules of journalism are approached (0:36), react to the reporting about the “concerned citizen” at Elizabeth Holmes’s trial (21:42), touch on what an in-season version of 'Hard Knocks' could look like (29:21), and much more! Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Listen up all you New York fans. Veteran New York Sports Talk host, John Dostromsky gives his unique take on all the big stories in the Big Apple and beyond, including guest conversations, gambling picks, and reactions from you, the listener. Check out New York, New York with John Dostromsky on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here, along with producer Erica Servantes. It's Friday, David. It's listener mail day. And I want to start here. Ben Smith of the New York Times wrote a column this week about Michael Wolfe, Michael Wolf, the writer and media critic who has a book about Donald Trump out right now and a new collection called Too Famous.

First of all, congratulations to Michael Wolfe for publishing a collection this late in the journalism era. Kind of thought those were mostly done, at least as hardbacked, books, but he squeezed one out. Congratulations. That's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about one line from Ben Smith's column, which is this. It's a curious fact of journalism that it has many rules, but the most successful journalists seem to be the ones who are always breaking them. That line kind of sat with me. What do you think about that? Yeah. I mean, the rules are.

of journalism, and we've gone over them on this show many times. I mean, it's it seems like the more seriously well, I mean, there's some that are fairly obvious, but a lot of them, the more you sort of talk them out, they sort of sound arcane, especially in a world of where

the competition, your competition is functionally YouTube, uh, social media, even like, you know, documentaries that you find streaming online,

which do not hold to the same sort of high standards as one might assume. And so, yeah, I mean, some of them are pretty straightforward. But of course, this is, you know, also in an era where trust in journalism, according to whatever polls is so low that, like, I guess it feels like the rules are more important than ever, right? We have to uphold all these values that we hold dear so that we can feel justified in the face of all this sort of irrational criticism and distrust. but I'm not sure that those things are actually as connected as they might seem.

That's a great point because I think that is what journalists do when criticized. We must uphold the public trust. We must go to these rules that the New York Times, the Washington Post and NPR and other places like that have devised. But the weird part is, do we think the public knows the rules of journalism? No. Beyond the basic ones like, you know, don't make things up. and, you know, don't, don't plagiarize somebody else. I don't think they do at all.

No. I mean, and even if they were to know the rules, I think that practically very few people would be, you know, aghast at some of the more notable, I mean, not more, but some of them more notable journalistic conspiracies. I mean, yes, like the sort of, you know, Stephen Glass sort of level stuff, you can wrap your head around it. But, like, you know, when people have called into question,

who, like Gay Talese and Joseph Mitchell in the modern era and some of their tactics, I don't think that most just average readers would be floored by any of those allegations, right? Or even if they knew that, even if they were surprised that it happened, that they would be kind of morally shocked by it, right? Yeah. So I'm not, so I think that some of the things that we, that journalism, the journalistic world might be preoccupied with is, it ends up feeling like a sort of insular concern, even if the rules on their face are, you know, something that most people say is a good idea.

Readers usually strike me as very bottom line. Did I like this story? Did I not like this story? Did this story upset me because I have, you know, a political or other, some other agenda that it violated and therefore your story sucks because I don't like what you wrote in your, on your website. That's always to me what readers really care about. Well, yeah. I mean, if you think about it, I mean, I guess like Gay Talese is a good example, right? I mean, it's like regardless of how that was composed. It's not just about the people breaking the rules have the most success. It's the people that write the most readable, most wonderful things that, you know, we love and hold dear and remember forever or even just or particularly meaningful in the moment. And it's the pieces themselves that matter and the sort of way that you got there matters none or very little at all, right? It's having a piece of. that you just react to in a very positive or visceral way. Yeah. And I think in Michael Wolf's case, it's interesting because there's this whole constituency of people out there, probably including people we know, who are like, I want to read the really juicy Trump book. Right.

Or the really devastating Trump book. And if Michael Wolf is kind of peering around corners in the West Wing in a way that a New York Times reporter, Washington Post reporter, cannot because that would be violating the. rules as determined by the times and post, the reader does not care. The reader absolutely does not care. The reader probably A, does not know that some rule has been violated, but if they know some rule has been violated, they're like, wow, I like this book. So it's great. Or conversely, if the reader is a Donald Trump fan and says, aha, Michael Wolf, you have broken the rules, I don't like this, but they're just using the rules because they didn't like what the book was anyway. That's exactly right. Yeah. I mean, when you think about it, the pieces of, the vast majority of people,

including people in journalism, hold to the highest, in the highest esteem, works of journalism that seem to transcend the mechanics of journalism in a sort of way. Like, you look at like,

like, who's a great example? I just read, Killers of the Flower Moon recently, the David Grand book, right? I mean, and that's, and David Grant, up and down his resume, you could probably take just about any piece,

but it's like, there's a certain style, he's not, he's not chronicling the world, White House. It's a different form of journalism. But what if you ask anybody who would read Lost City of Z or Kilda of the Fly Moon, what's so great about it? It's like it reads like a novel. Right? That's what people will say. It's it's bigger than that. It's I mean, it doesn't seem like you're eating vegetables. And that sort of implicitly is a statement that it doesn't really

matter. It's about it's about the telling of the story. Yeah. So those those David Grant and then before him the new journalists, they were rule transgressors. Yeah. We didn't even mention Truman Capote in terms of people who have been called into question after the fact. Nobody's taking in cold blood off of like, you know, the syllabus for, you know, true crime reading or, I mean, sure some people are.

Yeah. It's reputation has been smudged a little bit among, you know, but mostly among journalists, right? And you might talk about Truman Capote as a problem case, but then you look at the actual work itself and the work sort of stands on its own. It transcends the sort of question. that are lobbed against it. It's always just so funny the levels of this, because with the new journalist, right,

it's like, hey, you're getting inside the heads of people you're writing about. You're not just writing what you see, but you're then transporting yourself into their head. How are you doing that? That's not fair, right? We kind of decided that the line stopped here and you're transgressing the line. Therefore, aha, you've done something wrong to which the new journalist would just sort of shrug their shoulders. You can also go back and look at that journalism. now and read some of those quotes and be like, nobody actually said this to you.

They said something to you and you pieced together this long and sort of very writerly quote from the subject, but at the time, that was okay. Now it's not the time. Anyway, we could do this 100 things like this. But you're absolutely right. It's, and I think Ben Smith is right. There's a sense that the people who are pushing those boundaries of what you're supposed to do as a journalist are often the ones that wind up on top.

people say you can't think of all the stuff about gocker and deadspin old gawker and old deadspin you can't do that says the person who didn't publish what they publish you're not allowed to do that and they're okay i did it there's nothing and i think your other points you made earlier is really good too is when we talk about the rules there are some broadly accepted rules of things you can and can't do but now in this age where there are a billion different media entities including people that are just Twitter accounts, what rules possibly are governing us at this point? And surely almost everybody is breaking a rule that someone thinks is, someone else thinks this rule. So, you know, hey, I'm, I'm saying this about Joe Biden or Donald Trump.

You're not allowed to say that. Well, I just did it on my Twitter account. So I, I didn't agree to the rules ever. I'm not a newspaper reporter. That's a funny, I think, sort of part of this age in particular too. Anyway, I just thought that whole kind of thing is funny. And it's just funny with journalism rules because there's so much crying foul, there's so much working the refs. I do believe in them. I don't, I think there should be agreed upon things.

But as soon as you sort of poke at it, it becomes such a kind of funny idea. And like I said, I don't think readers really care. We're going to save Bob Woodward, David, mostly for Monday, because he has. a new book out, but I wanted to go over a few parts of it with you today. Woodward has now completed his one-word title Trump trilogy. Okay, yes. Right? We had fear.

We had rage. Elizabeth Gardner, listener, asks, Refresh my memory, please. Did either of you predict peril to be the one-word title of the upcoming Woodward book? No. And I've said this before on the show. But I immediately feel myself transported back to my days working in book publishing where you're just sending around title memos, just like suggested, you know, the best case scenario is the author submits a proposal that has a title attached to it that everybody just agrees on and high fives. And that's just it straight through. When you have to start negotiating it, it always gets the more voices involved in any kind of work of art, the more kind of wishy-washy it'll become. But no, I've seen. these emails that just have, I mean, it's almost embarrassing, right? It's just like, like 50 different

nouns, you know, will just be, just be in a, you know, in a single column list and people have to go through and, like, highlight the ones that they think work or whatever. I mean, it's just, I can feel it. I can, I know that's what happened here. Perel, it's not inaccurate, but, you know, it probably won out by being virtue, by virtue of being less inaccurate than the other words on the list, right? I mean, it's, it's a, there's, you know, there's sometimes where you'll get the book cover mockups with multiple different options, you know, it'll be like, we haven't settled, we're down to these three, so can you just show us the covers with these three? And then you pick which one looks the best. I mean, it's, wow, peril. Peril is a peril is an all-timer.

It's kind of an only in journalism word. Yeah. Not sure how many times I've actually said the word peril in my life. Probably been tempted to write it. The, other thing that's interesting about the new Woodward is that it is a dual byline Woodward book. Which isn't his first, obviously, but yes. Bob Woodward and Robert Costa,

ace reporter from the Washington Post who have been on this podcast. Bob and Bob. Did you, did that have any resonance to you? Oh, yeah. O.G investigative reporter plus, you know,

youngish and younger, youngish investigative reporter teaming up. Yeah. I mean, listen, my first reaction was obviously. obviously this was like a great pro wrestling tag team where the old veteran takes on the young protege and they conquer the world, right? I mean, this is, it's, uh, it's all the, all of the, the weight that, that, um, that Bob Woodward brings to the project with sort of the, the chops

that Bob, or Robert Costa, sorry, brings to the project. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a really, it's a really great duo. But it almost seems like, it almost seems like created in a factory or in a laboratory, right? I mean, it's just like, how could you, like, what is the best possible, we talked about campaign books and political books and everything else. There's a lot of these dual bylines, you know, because there's a lot of writing to be done in a relatively short period of time, but also because different people have different points of access and everything else.

But this just seems like, like, if a publishing company had the power of like a major movie mogul, this is, it's like, we're going to get, we're going to get DiCaprio and Scorsese in the room together, and we're going to make this project work. right? This is that that's the the Woodward Costa. If we could get these two, we could sell a trillion copies of the book and they they've made it happen. It was probably more of a decision

of the of the writers in this case who realized the obvious potential that they had together. Yeah, there's a little bit of Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga, I think you know that can we freshen up the act a little bit. Tony Bennett's in his 90s. Do you know that? It is. Yeah. I did that. My wife and I were trying to My wife and I were trying to place him in history. Did he overlap with the rat pack?

Like, how could he have been? Like, how old could he possibly be? I was like, nah, he's got to be in his late 70s or something. That guy's, man, he's incredible. Yeah, it's not, like, Woodward is not Tony Bennett now, but he's Tony Bennett and Johnny Cash when they had that MTV era rediscovery. Yes, exactly. And it's like, can we put him with new material?

Can we put him with somebody younger in a music video or with a song? Well, it's a canny move because, you know, writers don't really age out. or journalists, you know, whatever. They don't necessarily age out, partly because they're not in front of us. I mean, and even though Bob Woodward is in front of us, he is an ageless wonder. But, yeah, I mean, at some point,

you have to realize that, you know, a duet is a good idea, even if nobody around you is pointing at it and saying it. Our pal Chris Sullen Trump did the definitive Bob Woodward power rankings a while back. Oh, wow. So I consulted them to see how many dual bylines Bob Woodward has had on books.

He's obviously had a bunch of the Washington Post. I believe this is book Dual byline number five. So the two famous ones with Carl Bernstein, all the president's man in the final days, of course. He had a book about the Supreme Court called The Brethren

that was written with Scott Armstrong. Chris ranked that 15th out of 20 Woodward books. And then this is the really weird one. The man who would be president a book about the 1992 presidential campaign co-written with David Broder. Wow. That's kind of like Tony Bennett and Tony Bennett.

Yeah, for real. Doing the book together. Apparently, it was mostly a collection of newspaper articles. Speaking of collections. But I did not know that one. Chris ranked it 20th out of 20. And I will just say this, as long as we're talking about boundary pushing and changing the rules, Bob Woodward gave us fear and rage.

And so you and I are thinking in terms of emotions, what would be the emotion that would be the title of the third book? Parole is a little different. Parole is the country. Parole is the rule of law. Parole is the chain of command from the stuff that's already leaked out. But I feel Bob Woodward would kind of pull the rug out from under us. Yeah, well, he's a creative force.

He's always going to keep evolving. In a minute, David, I want to talk to you about the Elizabeth Holmes trial. I want to talk to you about one of the worst questions I have ever heard at a sports press conference and much more. But first let us do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. listener Andrew Grainig points us to some weird news about Saturday Night Live alum Jim

Brewer. I have no idea where this is going. I have no idea and I'm terrified. I'll give you the headline. Jim Brewer was on Tucker Carlson show this week, but this will explain it. Quote, Jim Brewer says he will not be performing at venues that require proof of COVID vaccination for guests.

Oh my gosh. Was that on your bingo card? Well, I mean, listen, comics and new, you know, little no, forgotten comics and news, I assumed it was going to be COVID adjacent, but, but that's still it's sad to hear. Some jokes on Twitter about Jim Brewer. Tell Jim Brewer to stick to comedy, but people are suffering enough already. Once we get the amount of COVID cases down to the number of Jim Brewer's fans, we can finally put the pandemic behind us. And finally, this is heartbreaking. Seeing Jim Brewer was on my bucket list. said no one, no one at all. Thanks to Andrew for those.

Wait, I just went to Jim Brewer's website and that it's, when you're post-S&L, it's a little bit demeaning to have like an active comedian's website. Am I wrong about that? It's like you should be a little, you're just like, it should just be like, get in touch with my agent situation and not like book me for the, you know, you should just be on IMDB pro or whatever. Yeah, exactly.

But the big thing they're promoting is something called Breakfast with Brew, where you can have a 30-minute Zoom session with him at breakfast time for $350. So vaccination doesn't matter. Oh, it's kind of ironic, right? He should be showing up at your doorstep and coughing is, you know, donuts all over you. You're right, though. It is humbling to have something like I have a website. Please contact me at info at jimbrewer.com or bookings at jimbrewer.com. I should be harder to find

It actually has one of those contact pages where you don't even get an email You just type it into the HTML and someone will return your message I tell you living in L.A. The kind of Saturday Night Live alum Who didn't really hit it big after the show Is a mainstay at the comedy clubs

There are a lot of Rob Schneider nights Rob Schneider interestingly enough Kind of also a political animal on Twitter David Spade The star of a movie called The Animal, if you have forgotten. Oh, wow, yeah, I had forgotten. David Spade is sometimes around after that show went away that he had for a while. Anyway, very funny.

This is a headline from the Wall Street Journal, David. Pre-COVID, office workers used commutes to decompress after a stressful day. Now we're immersing ourselves in TV drama to detach from job dramas. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, did a car write this? never gets old. Thanks to our friend Corbyn Dubois. I know myself in the commute era, sports radio was my detached from work period. Like, you know, whatever I'm worked up about, I'm going to listen to sports radio hosts having takes on my way home.

And that'll kind of be my moment. I guess now people, you just put on like a quality television series. I go the opposite way. The quality makes me think. I just want noise. So sports radio it is. Sports television or news, yeah. Finally, David, this people found a tweet from actress Olivia Munn from last December.

I don't know if you follow this story at all. Olivia Munn tweets in December sending so much love and support to John Mullaney. You got this. Very nice tweet to John Mullaney. Now, as if Olivia Munn had tweeted something that then manifested itself in a surprising way. She is dating John Mullaney and she is pregnant. Right.

So people went and found the other tweet. You're like, wow, you tweeted this and then look what happened. You can kind of guess where people went with this, but I want to use this one from the ringer's own Isaac Lee. Sending so much love and support to an affordably priced Los Angeles apartment with air conditioning in a parking spot. You got this. we're just willing it into existence

with a tweet thanks to Vince Parachi If you send so much love and support To a growing podcast audience The best guests and bottomless Overword Twitter jokes Congrats You made the Overword Twitter joke

Of the week All right David in the notebook dumb I have to read to you This story from Bobby Allen of NPR One of my favorite Journalism or journalism adjacent stories of recent memory. Bobby Allen is writing about

the Elizabeth Holmes trial. And what is happening specifically outside the courtroom? Because there was this figure outside the courtroom chatting with reporters. I'm going to let Alan tell the story here. Over the course of two days of jury selection, this gentleman

gabbed with reporters standing in line to get in the courthouse while on breaks and even during the trial, he writes. Continuing, maintained more or less the same story. He was a car enthusiast who was acting as a media watchdog, making sure

the news coverage matched what he observed in court. He distrusted how the press has treated Elizabeth Holmes, he said. Quote, no journalist has ever told the real story about her, he said. Everyone is just copy and pasting each other's stories

without thinking. Okay, so there is this man. He is wearing a puffy jacket and a baseball cap. He is identifying himself as a car enthusiast. I'm just here to make sure she gets a fair trial. You know,

just talking up the reporters. Alan's story continues. Opening arguments in the trial began one week later. Holmes walked into the courthouse surrounded by her family members and among the entourage was this man. He is now part of the

entourage. Gone where the puffer jacket and baseball cap. This day he wore a gray suit and a somber black tie. I couldn't believe my eyes, said New York Times reporter Aaron Griffith. I immediately started asking other reporters and they were like, I think it was him. And when we got inside and saw him even closer, it was like, yep, that was him. The man who had given his name when he was the chatty, I'm making sure she gets a fair trial guy as Hanson, turns out to be William L. Evans, the 61,

year old father of Holmes's partner Billy Evans with whom she just had a baby boy Alan writes Wow what a great move Yeah So the man on the street Or man outside the courthouse

Turns out to have a very vested interest in the trial and basically after a couple of days changes clothes and walks into the courtroom with Elizabeth Holmes. And he was just quoted widely as a previously unknown, just random supporter of Elizabeth Holmes.

It's unclear how much he was actually quoted, but he was certainly like a chatting it up with reporters. Mm-hmm. And giving his name as Hansen. Mm-hmm. Now, Alan writes, he did not deny telling reporters his name was Hansen. Instead, he defended it.

People have nicknames, and you can be free, to use them. On that note, I'll say goodbye. Oh my gosh. Oh, I love it. Good note to reporters. If anyone is sort of just too convenient a figure or a quote. Yeah. And they give their name only as Hanson. Maybe you should maybe you should be a little skeptical of that figure. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. You know, I like to make fun, David, of questions asked during sports press conferences. Yeah, of course.

I love sports writers. I really do. But sometimes we need to do a little better. I want to draw your attention to this particular question. It's about Urban Meyer, the coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Now, Urban Meyer has been known during his head coaching career, almost all of which was in college football for abruptly changing jobs. so when the Jacksonville Jaguars lost their first game of the season last week and the head coaching job at USC USC became available there were some rumors is Urban Meyer going to leave Jacksonville and go to USC you heard about those

of course if you're a beat writer in Jacksonville you've got to ask Urban Meyer about that even that seems even though it seems fairly unlikely just listen to the way this question was floated unfortunately for you some rumors came out yesterday connecting you to the USC job i just just want to give you the opportunity to refute it so i could put it to bed no chance okay unfortunately for you always a bad way to start a question i want to give you the opportunity to refute it to put it to bed i'm not just going to ask you hey urban are you going to USC are you going to leave your NFL job after a few games or after one season to go back to college.

I'm going to phrase it specifically like, I would like to give you an opportunity to refute these rumors. It's such weird wording. Doesn't it sound like it's Urban Myers boss? I'm giving you the opportunity to refute this story. Like it's like an HR kind of moment or something. What's the, what's your journalistic integrity, journalistic ethics? take on this. If you know a subject well enough to know that you have to just like pose a question

in a certain way, potentially a certain like buttered up effusive way to get the honest answer or the closest thing to an answer that you will get, is it okay? Is it okay to do it like that? Not like that. Like, well, they say unfortunately, just take the unfortunately for you. Like that's overly personal, but maybe you just know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have to, you have to introduce into evidence that you don't think that, that you are aware that this is a bad, you know, that this is not something he wants to talk about. Okay. Do you think that's an okay way to start the question? I think the move is to say, urban, I've got to ask. And then you ask the question. I know you'd rather me ask about how the offensive line is coming together and

some basic football stuff. I've got, this is going in the reporter's mind, not actually out of their mouth, but just urban, I've got to ask. I think that kind of does the job, right? I guess so.

Yeah, I mean, but that's, it's a very bizarre phrasing. I just, I don't ever want questions to public figures to sound apologetic. That,

that just seems bad. And it's one of those things of like, I think what's happening here is the reporters there know it's very, very unlikely that Urban Meyer is going to walk away from the Jaguars. It's exceedingly unlikely, as I saw implied by at least one tweet, that he would do this during the season.

Like I was just going to coach one NFL game or five NFL games and then leave. That seems pretty bonkers. So I think what's informing this is there's no chance this is true. But again, it comes off as just very kind of weird and very weird,

apologetic. Speaking of sports, This is from DeNarius McWamberton has a question about hard knocks. You know Hard Knocks, the NFL approved documentary that is about one team's preseason training camp each year. Well, yesterday the NFL and HBO announced that there will be a hard knocks during the season. It's about the Indianapolis pulse. Yeah, and it's coming in November. So DeNarius says, thoughts on in-season hard knocks think it will be better than the training camp version.

I'm a little bit, I mean, listen, there's obviously a lot more intrigue to this, right? I mean, when you look at any other sports documentary series or movie or anything else, from Hoosiers all the way to, you know, last chance, you, whatever. I mean, the story is the season, right? The story is the road to the potentially to the playoffs and however the season ends. It's not about getting revved up for the season. So, yeah, there's a lot more like drama, potential drama inherent in this setup. But I mean, I'm just like I am preemptively exhausted by all the sort of like finger wagging that's going to go on and all this sort of whatever, the performative eye rolling about how the lot of the cameras, the presence of the cameras is going to, you know, play havoc with the cold season and whether or not they should they should allow cameras to follow these players around and they're trying to do their jobs during the season. I mean, it it just seems like.

that conversation is going to take up more space than the show itself. And also, I mean, well, I was going to say not to get too political, but who gives a fuck? I mean, do we really need to, do we really need to be giving like documentary airtime on the NFL network, HBO, sorry, to a quarterback who's like, who seems to be an anti-vaxxer? That's going to be the drama of the season? Like, is that drama that we need to publicize? Well, it is interesting, right? I mean, yeah, it's, it's interesting, but like, we don't need his, like, him, I mean, I don't know that we need the platform like flat earth theory on one of these things and certainly don't need a platform like, oh, I'm just, you know, this is a family decision situation if it's just denialism. I don't know. Maybe he does have some family stuff. Maybe there's some disease or something that we don't know about. Well, on that point, I do think it's, there's an interesting question of how much are you going to get in the middle of the season? How much is Hard Knocks going to get? Because if I heard Carson Wentz, the, uh, Colts quarterback correctly in terms of all the vaccination stuff. He's like, all right, I'm

kind of done talking about this. Like, I don't want to talk about this every week unless there's some, something happens with the team and I absolutely need to talk about this. So I just feel training camp is a time to sort of get these guys in a relaxed atmosphere. That's why NFL writers, like our own Kevin Clark and Nora Prince Yoddy go out there and do pieces in training camp. Oh, yeah. Because you've kind of got these guys in a moment where they're a little, they just have a little more So I just sort of wonder what you're going to get during the season. Now maybe it's awesome. You know, Amazon has done this series where they do,

they just publish it after the season's over about the, what was the Dallas Cowboys? What was it? What is that called? All or nothing? Yeah. They've done it. They did the Rams too.

That was kind of cool. So, you know, maybe you'll get stuff. But if you're publishing it week to week, it is sort of interesting. The other thing I thought is I watched Hard Knox this year pretty closely because it was about the Dallas Cowboys. Of course, yeah.

And they get so much mileage out of guys who are in training camp who are going to be cut. Yeah. We're going to be on the practice squad because those guys are very getable. They're often very interesting stories because they come from not a big college

or they're just really cool and their families there. And send the cameras home to like the temporary housing where their family's living and yeah. Exactly. And now if you're like just trying to get NFL players, even if you have the kind of hard knocks NFL shield working for you, I just wonder how much you're going to be able to get. Because they're already doing it like we're going to give you a little of the franchise quarterback. But we're also going to give you a lot of that guard who's a right on the edge of the roster who you're really rooting for. Well, that guard's gone now or is on the practice squad. So now who are you going to get in season? I don't know. I just sort of wonder about that.

Yeah, no, it's a, it's a good question. I mean, the Colts are, I mean, there's a calculus for all these teams at some point comes down to publicity, right? I mean, it's, you know, you don't see Bill Belichick doing this kind of stuff. It's a bit, it's a, it's a lot of times it's kind of teams on the come up who, you know, want to get that national exposure. And then there's like, the Cowboys seem to do it like every third year because Jerry Jones can't say no to a, you know, to the cameras. But, you know, I think that. For the same, and there's always some NFL arm twisting that goes on with these things because they have to get a team to do it, even if every team is sort of inclined to say no, you know, on first response. But all that said, I mean, whatever the decision making process that goes into the team deciding to say yes, there has to be some amount of pressure, the same amount of motivation to get certain people to talk, you know, and the vast majority of players are not in the position of a quarterback or of a even above.

average NBA player where you could just say no of your own accord. You know, you're a little bit reliant on the advice of the PR department in the front office. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they have all those rules, remember, where it's like if you didn't make the playoffs, your team is like, is draftable for hard knocks. Also the Cowboys thing that was cool. Do you remember Jerry Jones?

You see this clip where he was eating a breakfast sandwich? Like a fast foodie type breakfast sandwich? I would like that to be part of any end-season hard knocks, too. There was a lot of, I was listening to Philly Sports Radio the other day and there was a lengthy discussion about Jerry Jones's Whataburger Affinity. And then they started ranking Whataburger amongst the various kind of regional fast food restaurants and I don't know, man. I don't know. I think it's cool if somebody really likes What a burger that much. But there is a very like old rich guy thing, especially if you sort of, or a self-made person or, you know, whatever.

But like, but if you were like, if you're Jerry. Jones's age, every fast food restaurant is a miracle of the modern world, right? The fact that you could like roll up to some place and just have a broiled hamburger presented to you at a moment's notice. I mean, it's really like magic. So you can understand these old rich dudes fascination with the hamburger, with it with the fast food, right? Yes, you could.

And by the way, isn't this where in season hard knocks should go? Shouldn't it be about the owners? Sure. Yeah. Because those guys have time during the season. they do they have a lot of time jerry's also the GM of the cowboys but jim ursay strikes me as a great potential for documentary and comedy and documentary comedy during the cold season yes she's probably available it's not giving away any trade secrets and i would just follow him around

all the time maybe though they should just instead or they could just lean into the food just everybody's eating habits are always interesting right jerry you remember jerry jones have we talked about in the show. Jerry Jones famously had like a burrito in the freezer for every day of the week that he would get from some. Jimmy Johnson, yeah. What did I just say? Jerry Jones. Oh yeah. Jimmy Johnson had it had the different burrito for every day. Did you see the Wolfgang Puck documentary that's on the Disney app or whatever? But this isn't football, but he had a similar story about Johnny Carrey. He says that they invented the to go, they started going into like, you know, grocery store freezers because like Johnny Carson would come in and order like 15

personal pizzas at a time and put him in his freezer. Anyway, everybody loves to know how the rich and famous, and in the case of NFL players, incredibly calorie-starved, eat. Yes. Right? I mean, I want to know that. I cannot imagine anything that happens behind the scenes in the locker room that's more interesting than how that Cowboys' Offensive Line keeps their weight up during a season.

You know? So if we're in the Colts having a potentially really great offensive line too, let's go see those big guys. Like let's find out what their Chipotle orders are because it's going to be fascinating. Dude, I am so in on that. Our only in journalism word of the day, David. Okay. Comes from Berg.

The word is Gerd. GIRD. Oh, GERD. Baird sends over this headline from the New York Times Democrats and lobbyists GERD for Battle

It's a great political journalism words particularly a headline word It's short we always get those short headline words Four letters or less But GERD for battle Feels like a just absolute

Standby of Political Journalism Yes it's also I mean it's an old fashion word Right I mean it's sometimes These sort of very specific short You know short words always, you know, or preferable in the journalistic world. So to me, when I hear Gerd, I feel like girded is like a, it's a song I sang in like hymns at church growing up a lot, you know,

and like, and the more like militant, the more like, you know, the hymns that alluded to, you know, armies and in war efforts. Yeah. I mean, but yes, it's, people don't say GERD very much these days. In the nation's capital, the Democrats were girding for battle. over the budget amendment. Yeah, very, very newsreel. It's time for David Schumaker guess is the strained pun headline. All right. Monday's headline about a WNBA star stealing a victory was Petty Larsonie.

We had a vote for Petty and the Heartbreaker. Very good. That's great. Today's headline comes from Nathan. He credits the CBS affiliate in Richmond, Virginia, but I believe the pun is pretty widespread David I am excited

to report to you that you can rent a house in England that it has been designed to look exactly like Winnie the Pooh's house do not do not Google this because you're going to find the pun

while I do it but let me explain it to you this is according to the Today Show's website you can now stay at the Winnie the Pooh inspired cottage in East Sussex, England. And it's so sweet that even Eeyore is smiling. Situated in the Ashdown Forest, the setting for A.A. Milne's Children's Classic.

I believe that is the original 100-acre wood, the Ashdown Forest. It's available to book as part of Disney's 95th anniversary celebration. It sleeps up to four guests and is hosted by Kim Raymond, who has been drawing poo for more than 30 years. Again, please don't look this up, but it looks awesome. Wow.

Very, very cool. I think there's some members of my family that would really enjoy that. And if you think that the kitchen includes honey pots, you're correct, sir. It includes those honey pots. All right. Rent Winnie the Pooh's house in the original 100-acre wood. What was everybody's strain pun headline? Is it?

Is it Bear B&B? I was going to say you're going to get it right away. Bear B&B. You know what, Trick, what gave it to me, though, was when you just said, said rent with with with with the extra accent on it I was just like why why rent doesn't feel like the right word there and then so I'm bear B&B he is David Shoemaker I'm Brian Curtis production magic by Erica Servantes am I allowed to mention the David Shoemaker life event that's happening this weekend yeah it's an it's we're having a we're having a big party in which my my wife and I are

actually finally actually exchanging vows that's right folks David Shoeemaker is getting married this weekend. Yeah, which is a surprise to everyone who's ever heard me refer to my, who's heard my, or even referred to my wife many, many times over the past five years. So yeah, it's a, it'll be fun. I know you. I love you.

I've known you since I was 14. I'm willing to admit I thought you were already married. Yeah, I did too, actually. You've been doing marriage. There was a paperwork error, I think. You've been doing marriage-y things. Yeah. For a long time.

Yeah. For a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I just thought you'd gotten it. You know, at some point, you said walked into a courthouse and done it. But I was delighted that you didn't because now I get to go to the wedding.

Yeah, it's going to be fantastic. I have my best man speech already. And I'm going to, I'm going to get up there and I'm going to say, does anybody like insidery media criticism? And when it's dead silence, I'm going to scrub the first 10 jokes. That's it. Whoa. Tough crowd.

Oh, wow. That's fantastic. If David and I aren't too hungover. We're going to be back Monday with more little more tips about the media. See you that, David. See you later, Brian.